Stone Soup Servings Presents: Peter Storey

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Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry now meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery’snew location at 541 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. The open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

This Monday, we begin December’s Stone Soup lineup with the return of past open mic wonder Peter Storey. See samples of his previously published fiction and poetry before reading below. Then make plans to be in the audience on December 1st.

Skinwalkers

Dry lightning had been growling and the smoke
Reports were coming fast. We popped one and
The up-load scrambled to our little ship;
The pilot pulled collective; we were gone.

We found it fifteen minutes later, on
The border of the juniper and hard
Mesquite-land. Quarter acre, patchy black,
Consuming grass and timber litter slow.

We landed hot. Mike played IC and sized
It up for dispatch, asking for the ship
To drop a bucket-cycle. Afterwards,
We lined it then began to mop it up.

The ship flew back to base. Few smokes remained
Interior. We crushed them with dry earth.
The moisture-bloated monsoon clouds from pink
To purple rioted, then faded grey.

We called the day when darkness fell. We’d check
Again next morning. Moisture in the night,
I thought, would handle any heat still left.
We rolled our bags out, then we lit our smokes.

The night air settled. Birds and bats took wing.
The forest murmured. Crickets took to song.
Coyotes yipped an incantation strange.
Then out into the moonlight stepped a man.

“So who the fuck are you?” Mike asked. He said:
“A man, the same as you. And is this how
You treat a stranger in the woods, who’s come
To share a little friendly company?”

The man said that he was Coyote; we
Shook hands around and offered him a seat.
He showed his antler flute and softly played
The same song as the little wolves still sang.